Pennsylvania Patriot or Tenacious Feminist

Pennsylvania Patriot, Jane Swisshelm, was not only a prolific author, editor and publisher, but a tenacious feminist advocate during the Civil War. Major achievements of her life included reforming laws pertaining to married women’s right to own property, the promotion of feminism in America through blatant and powerful criticism and reprisals, and the spread of sentiment against slavery. She also began several newspapers of which the St. Cloud Democrat was the most prominent. During the Civil War Swisshelm served as a nurse, and before dying in 1884 wrote an autobiography. Wherever she resided, whether as a Pennsylvania Patriot, Minnesota publisher and editor or in Washington D.C. as a Political Activist, Jane Swisshelm will always be remembered as a woman of intelligence and pluck, a Great American and always a Pennsylvania Patriot.

Jane Grey Cannon was born on December 6, 1815, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Raised in a Scottish Covenanter community with stories about her Scottish ancestors’ rebellion against English authority, Swisshelm believed individuals had the responsibility to reject the authority of an unjust state.  From an early age, she also learned of the immorality of slavery through the teachings of the family minister, John Black.  At the age of 12 she was sent to a boarding school with her cousin. After six months she was called home by her mother because of a brother’s death. Jane Grey Cannon taught lace making in 1823 to help support her family, and she became a schoolteacher at age 14. In 1838, Jane married farmer James Swisshelm and for nearly twenty years struggled to make an unhappy marriage work. The couple clashed constantly on issues of religion, property and living arrangements. They eventually divorced.  In 1842, Swisshelm began writing short stories in local newspapers signing them Jennie Dean. Eventually her beliefs about slavery and feminism were put on paper in The Spirit of Liberty, an anti-slavery newspaper in Pittsburgh.

Marriage was the driving force that formed much of the feministic ideals that she believed in. Swisshelm was a victim of male domination until she came to realize the injustice that was present in society. One of the results of her marriage was her most important achievement, a bill that allowed women the ownership of property. This resulted when her husband claimed ownership indebted property left by her mother. Before this incident, law dictated that married women could not own property. Articles that she wrote in the Pittsburgh Commercial Journal addressed the issue; she made the situation known and used a persuasive example of the time to sway public opinion. The Pennsylvania legislature, in response to her articles and two related legal cases, passed a law that allowed married women to own property.

In 1848 Swisshelm established her own anti-slavery newspaper, the Pittsburg Saturday Visiter.  Swisshelm also used the newspaper to advocate woman’s rights. She was also paid $5 a week by Horace Greeley, for contributing a weekly article for the New York Tribune. On 17th April, 1850, Swisshelm became the first woman to sit in the Senate press gallery.

Swisshelm moved to Minnesota and established the St. Cloud Visiter. She ran a column of comments and advice in response to readers’ letters. In 1853, she published a collection of these columns in book form called Letters to Country Girls. Swisshelm’s newspaper office was attacked by a pro-slavery mob and her printing press was destroyed. Swisshelm purchased another and launched a new antislavery journal, the St. Cloud Democrat.

In St. Cloud, Swisshelm found a world quite different from that of Pittsburgh. There, as in other newly settled towns in America’s western territories, women had greater opportunities and freedoms, and could actively participate in public life. Swisshelm soon became the editor of the St. Cloud Visiter, and later the St. Cloud Democrat, writing on behalf of women’s rights and the abolition of slavery

She went on to edit three other newspapers, freelance for major publications like the New York Times and hold numerous speaking engagements. She used these venues to speak out for women’s rights, the temperance movement, abolition, integration of schools and the idea of equal pay for equal work.

In 1863, after the end of the Dakota Indian Rebellion, she left the St. Cloud Democrat in the hands of her nephew and moved to Washington, D.C., to offer her personal advice to President Abraham Lincoln regarding his Indian policy. She earned her living as one of the first female clerks in the quartermaster general’s office and spent her free time nursing Union soldiers in the field hospitals surrounding the city.

Jane Swisshelm, in a report to the St. Cloud Democrat she wrote about a mass Union meeting at the Capitol on March 31,1863, attended by President Lincoln. Her article related:

“He is very tall and very pale. He walked quickly forward, bowed and took his seat. He was dressed in a plain suit of black which had a worn look; and I could see no sign of watch chain, white bosom or color. But all men have some vanity, and during the evening, I noticed he wore on his breast, an immense jewel, the value of which I can form no estimate. This was the head of a little fellow ‘Tad’ Lincoln, about seven years old, who came with him and for a while sat quietly beside him in one of the great chairs, but who soon grew restless and weary under the long drawn out speeches of the men in the desk, and who would wander from one Member of the Cabinet to another, leaning on and whispering to him, no doubt asking when that man was going to quit and let them go home; and then would come back to father, come around, whisper in his ear, then climb on his knee and nestle his head down on his bosom. As the long bony hand spread out over the dark hair, and the thin face above rest the sharp chin upon it, it was a pleasant sight. The head of a great and powerful nation, without a badge of distinction, sitting quietly in the audience getting bored or applauding like the rest of us; soothing with loving care the little restless creature so much dearer than all the power he wields – a power greater than that exercised by any other human being on earth.”

In December 1865 she began publishing another newspaper, The Reconstructionist, and concentrated her editorial efforts on monitoring the course of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. She finally gave up her role as a newspaper editor in March 1866 when an arsonist tried to set fire to her pressroom and living quarters.

Left with no source of income and a daughter to support, Jane returned to Pittsburgh. On the advice of her friend, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, she sued her ex-husband for fraud and won her case in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1868. The court granted her possession of the Swisshelm homestead, Swissvale. After she had made improvements to the house, she and her only child, Zo moved in.

Jane spent the last fifteen years of her life moving from place to place, trying to make her living as a freelance journalist and public speaker. Based at Swissvale and at a country cottage in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, she often visited her sister in St. Cloud and spent considerable time in Chicago, writing for the Chicago Tribune and composing her memoirs.

Jane Grey Swisshelm, died July 22, 1884, at her Swissvale, Pennsylvania home and was laid to rest at the Allegheny Cemetery,

Jane Grey Swisshelm was not only a Pennsylvania Patriot, but a tenacious feminist that will be forever remembered, as an abolitionist and a fiery Reconstructionist. Her ability to be heard in a time when women usually remained silent, makes her a dynamic figure in American history.

Bummer